Autobiografia Literatura Kultura Media

The article focuses upon Kazimiera Szczuka’s long interview with Maria Janion, locating it in the context of women’s autobiographies published in the 21st century Poland. The book under study – Trances – Traumas – Transgressions – is a part of an interesting publishing venture under a collective title of “The Rose Series”. The series presents biographies of active women: feminists, women who have made a significant contribution to Polish scholarship and science, culture, arts or politics. In her study, the author endeavors to single out particular trends characterizing the genre of the woman’s autobiography in Poland in relation to the central concerns of the feminist thought. It is against such a backdrop that she proceeds to demonstrate the uniqueness of “The Rose Series”. Her argument leads to a reflection upon whether or not it is possible to claim the emergence of a new way of constructing a woman’s autobiography in the Polish cultural discourse. To answer such a question, the author juxtaposes the ‘masculine point of reference’ – determining the ‘traditional’ direction of the process of autobiography construction – against the network of reference central to the construction of a woman’s autobiography, and sets some of Maria Janion’s statements and observations against stereotypes concerning social and cultural roles of the woman in the Polish context.